These leaks occur with such frequency that I imagine an employee sitting in a West Wing cubicle with a desk plate that reads, “Anonymous Senior White House Official.” This guy annoys all non-anonymous staffers with his constant whispering, his obsession with Perez Hilton and his stinky microwave popcorn. He didn't even get furloughed.

With all this secret spilling, I became momentarily business-minded, explaining my brilliant idea to Hubby.

Me: “You know what I could do? Collect and manage secrets.”

Hubby: (stops shaving)

Me: “I'm onto something, right? When the time is right, I'll
leak the secrets to the press.”

Hubby: “That's already been done.”

Me: (crestfallen) “Man, all the good ideas have been taken.”

Hubby: “It was called WikiLeaks. It wasn't such a good idea.”

Me: “Oh. It was a great idea if you want to live in an embassy. Or an airport.” (wins conversation)

Hubby: (shakes head, resumes shaving)

There is a reason that all these blabbermouths don't get fired. Most have been told to squeal like a pig. They're either floating political ideas to gauge public reaction or leaking new products to generate buzz among consumers. Think Apple and Microsoft.

Attention-addicted celebrities “accidentally” leak nude photos or ask their cohorts to disclose (either true or false) news of impending weddings, pregnancies and divorces. Some “secrets” are simply fabrications, as evidenced by the number of magazines that have touted that Jennifer Aniston is pregnant (with twins! triplets! kittens!). Americans are still eager to buy into the tales.

To be fair, keeping secrets (especially dark ones) can be harmful to our health. Researchers have found that immediate relief can come from writing secrets in a journal or on paper that is then destroyed.

Women, researchers concluded, keep a secret for roughly 47 hours, a number that decreases when alcohol is involved. Personally, that seems like an awfully long time. Forty percent of the 3,000 women included in the study thought revealing a secret to someone who didn't know the secret holder was acceptable.

Men likely blab just as much, but our ideas are skewed thanks to all those magazine headlines that scream, “Secrets Men Keep from Women” and “What Husbands Don't Tell Their Wives.”

Alas, the days when a handsome president can slyly slip away with a breathless, voluptuous screen star are long gone. We are a nation that loves telling and hearing secrets, and that means we need to be prepared. After all, secrets are what kept hope alive when Elvis “died” and when astronauts “landed on the moon” and when Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France “drug-free.” Secrets kept us from panicking when those aliens landed at Area 51 and the Illuminati brought down Wall Street.

It prompts the question (cue Jack Nicholson): Can we handle the truth?